John Grant School, Caister-on-Sea

Hello and welcome to the John Grant School Website. At John Grant, we are proud of what we do and hope you will find any information you need here. If not please contact us directly by email or phone.

I have been Head Teacher at John Grant School since January 2024. Before that, I worked here at John Grant for 14 years in various roles, most recently as a member of the Senior Leadership team since 2018. I have worked in special education since 2006 in various roles and I am grateful for the valuable experience this has given me.

In November 2023 we had our latest visit from Ofsted and as a result, we were delighted that we were judged to still be an “Outstanding” school – with some clear areas to develop further to ensure we retain this into the future please follow the link on the website if you would like to read more about this.

We are currently working on our whole school improvement plan for the next few years, consolidating the changes we have experienced and responded to over the past few years and looking ahead at our ‘next steps’.

At John Grant School, we always endeavour to put our pupils' many, varied and complex needs first. As a result, we retain a very flexible approach to school organisation looking each year at what will work best for the pupils. Overall our class bases are broadly organised by age into key stages, but within this, we have introduced more needs-led groupings incorporating the very particular teaching strategies and pace of learning that will enable the pupils to make the best possible progress. More traditional “academic” progress is very important to us and we now use what we call “John Grant Levels” (a development from the old “P levels) to track this. Along with more specialist assessment tools where relevant. We also value the progress that our pupils make in areas like social skills, independence, self-regulation, decision making and communication in its broadest sense. We prioritise and encourage pupils to use whichever individual or combination of communication strategies that suits them best; whether this be speech, signing, PECS, Objects of reference, gesture, facial expression or electronic communication aids.

If you would like to find out more about the work that we do first-hand, please contact the school office to make an appointment to come and visit. We are currently experiencing high numbers of visitor requests. To organise these with minimum disruption to pupils, we are offering half-termly open evenings from 4 – 5 pm where I will provide key information about our school and be available to offer answers to any queries you may have. Please contact our school office to express your interest in attending an open afternoon.

Belinda Brookes,

Head Teacher